Salmon: A Food to Fight Inflammation

Learn why inflammation is harmful and how eating more salmon could help reduce it.

By Kate Cornell
2 Comments

Advertisement

Advertisement

Kate Cornell was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in June of 2005. Since then, she has controlled diabetes through dietary changes, exercise, and, more recently, metformin. She shares her experiences and lessons learned here and on her blog, kates-sweet-success.blogspot.com, which was named as one of the top diabetes blogs for 2015 by Healthline.com.

The words “chronic inflammation” can be found in many articles these days. This inflammation is blamed for many diseases, including type 2 diabetes. But how does inflammation develop, and what can we do about it?

As much as we might be tired of hearing this: excess weight and inactivity can contribute to developing type 2 diabetes. Researchers discovered cytokines in higher numbers inside the fat cells of people with type 2 diabetes. Cytokines are chemicals that can increase inflammation in the body. These researchers concluded that, “Fat causes continuous (chronic), low levels of abnormal inflammation that alters insulin's action and contributes to the disease.” Insulin resistance also adds to chronic inflammation. Excess weight can increase inflammation which can interfere with insulin action (resistance) which can cause weight gain which…becomes a vicious circle.

So now we know that inflammation isn’t good but what can we do to combat it? An article at Dlife.com shows us several foods that we can eat that fight inflammation. Many of these foods are ones that we already know we should be eating. One of those foods is salmon.

Salmon is an excellent source of omega 3 fatty acids. This abstract found at the National Institute of Health, explains how omega 3’s dampen chronic inflammation. There’s lots of science in that article but the bottom line is that omega-3 fatty acids reduce the production of pro-inflammatory enzymes and cytokines. How much salmon should we eat and which type? Wild salmon has more omega 3’s than farmed salmon. Any salmon that you buy that comes from Alaska is wild caught salmon and Atlantic salmon is usually farmed. The American Heart Association recommends that you eat at least 2 servings of fatty fish, like salmon, per week. More is better!

There you have it, inflammation is another thing we need to be concerned about but we can choose to eat certain, yummy foods and that alone may be all we need to make a difference.